Streaming Wars

“Now We Live in a Volume World”: New WarnerMedia Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt Talks About HBO Post-Plepler and the Coming Battle with Netflix

“We’ve got HBO, and when you add in Warner Bros. and Turner, all of that comes together,” says Greenblatt. “And we’ll also acquire other things, so I think there’s a high probability we can come up with a great service.”

Days after the departures of HBO chief executive Richard Plepler and Turner Broadcasting president David Levy, parent company WarnerMedia—the nine-month-old programming and content arm of AT&T—has announced a new corporate structure as the division girds for battle in the streaming wars, and the reasons for the departures have become clearer. The re-org, in which four executives have been designated as direct reports to WarnerMedia C.E.O. John Stankey, includes expanded portfolios for CNN president Jeff Zucker (who now also becomes chairman of WarnerMedia News & Sports) and Warner Bros. C.E.O. Kevin Tsujihara (who adds the company’s kids and young adult business to his plate), as well as the elevation of Gerhard Zeiler to chief revenue officer of WarnerMedia.

But the most consequential move was the appointment of Bob Greenblatt as chairman of the newly minted WarnerMedia Entertainment, which rolls up HBO with TNT, TBS, and truTV, three networks formerly under the Turner umbrella. With peak-TV champion Plepler out the door, Greenblatt is now the person WarnerMedia will rely on to keep the prestige programming mojo rolling, especially at HBO, which is the empire’s crown jewel. They’re big shoes to fill. “Richard has just led HBO to record growth in back-to-back-to-back years, during a time widely seen as the most competitive in TV history, while delivering record profits and operating under severe financial constraints,” said Matthew Ball, a former Amazon Studios executive who now writes about the streaming and premium TV space for MediaREDEF. “The loss of Richard is a loss for AT&T, HBO, and Hollywood talent. But Richard was investing in substantial originals growth long before AT&T. It will take some time for his loss to be felt in the marketplace, and he leaves behind a team and plan that can thrive.”

Greenblatt, of course, is not a lightweight. Most recently, he was chairman of NBC Entertainment. Before that, he spent seven years as president of entertainment for Showtime, where he helped usher the pay channel (and HBO competitor) into the golden age of television with hits like Weeds, Dexter, The Tudors, and Nurse Jackie. Now, perhaps the biggest priority on Greenblatt’s plate is to figure out how to expand and package HBO, the Turner channels, and the Warner Bros. library into a single, must-subscribe streaming service that viewers are willing to pay for in addition to the myriad other subscriptions that appear on their credit-card statements each month—Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, not to mention traditional cable bundles and forthcoming competing offerings from Disney, Apple, Comcast, and others.

It’s a tall order. The space is becoming exceedingly crowded, and Netflix’s scale and spend is unparalleled. Amazon has been gaining steam recently, Disney’s service will surely be formidable, and on top of that, every other player who’s getting into the game wants to break through just as much as WarnerMedia does. (The company’s streaming platform is expected to launch in beta by the end of this year.) Plus, WarnerMedia is walking two lines at once—its traditional cable deals and the soon-to-launch streaming option. “If you create a great show for HBO and you can subscribe to HBO through your cable provider,” said BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield, who covers new media and the streaming space, “the question you now have is, do I subscribe to HBO or to WarnerMedia? What’s gonna make me pay more money to subscribe to this new service? It better be stuff that’s absolutely amazing, because I already think HBO content is pretty great.” Greenfield added: “All these legacy media companies are trying to balance new versus old, whereas companies like Amazon and Netflix, all they have is new.”

Shortly after the Greenblatt announcement landed Monday morning, I got on the phone with him for a brief interview, which has been lightly condensed and edited.

Vanity Fair: I know it’s only been like, two hours at this point, but can you lay out your general vision for this new roll-up of entertainment properties that is poised to compete against Netflix and the other over-the-top streaming players?

Bob Greenblatt: On day one, if you expect me to have all of that, they’ve hired the wrong guy. All I will say is, we’re gonna try to keep these networks really strong, and their brands distinctive from one another, and at the same time build this streaming platform that will incorporate all the assets of this company. There are a lot of details and work that has to be done to get there, but the beauty of this company is that HBO, Turner, and the Warner Bros. assets, combined with the power of AT&T, is the way we’re gonna get there.

I’d imagine part of the plan is to bring more prestige content to TBS and TNT, more things like, say, The Alienist. Do those channels start to look more like HBO in some ways? How do you navigate differentiation when all of these brands are ultimately going to be trying to lure eyeballs with top-shelf programming?

Those are the conversations we have to get into, and on day one, I don’t have those answers in complete sentences yet, because these networks were just very separate from one another in the past. We now have to look at them in a bigger way. I want to keep HBO really, really distinctive in what it is, and the Turner networks distinctive from HBO. I don’t know yet exactly what that means. Yes, we’re all gonna be contributing to a streaming service, but that doesn’t mean everything has to be, quote, unquote, premium TV. That’s to be determined.

Will there be originals that are exclusive to the streaming consumer?

I think yes is a pretty good answer. I’m just not sure about the extent of that. But yes, there has to be.

The mandate for HBO is to increase output, and the big question is how much you can do that without watering down what HBO stands for. How do you balance that?

It’s a really good question, because now we live in a volume world, and there’s no way to really avoid that. I don’t think HBO will ever be in the volume of, say, Netflix. We’ve gotta increase the output to make sure the streaming service is great, but I don’t think we want to do that in a way where we dilute what we can really deliver on at a very high level. So yeah, we can increase everything, and we’ve increased budgets to do that already, but it’s not gonna suddenly be 10 times the number of shows.

Do you have a ballpark sense, dollar wise, of how much investment it’s going to take across the board to meaningfully compete with players that are sinking upwards of $10 billion a year into original content?

This whole company already spends $12 billion when you add in all the things that will roll up into this service, and I think we’ve gotta increase that. But that doesn’t mean there will suddenly be 150 new scripted series either.

Within HBO, do you expect the team to remain intact, and will anyone step into a role that would be similar to Plepler’s job, but reporting to you?

To that first part, I think Casey Bloys [HBO’s programming president], has done a fantastic job. We’re happy to have him and we’re lucky to have him. I don’t know much yet about the team beneath him, but I think he’s a great leader and someone I’ll rely on more and more as we increase the volume. I’m thrilled to have him, and also to have Kevin Reilly on the Turner side. As to having another person in a similar Plepler role, I don’t think that’s gonna happen right away. I have to see how things are gonna go, but I don’t know that there will be anyone coming into the same role Richard had.

There are people who would argue that, at this point, it’s really Netflix’s game to lose—they have too many users and too much of a head start for legacy players to catch up, even though Netflix, too, has to increase how much original programming it’s churning out. What are your thoughts on that?

One of the reasons I wanted to do this is because I do think there’s a high probability of us being able to pull it off. We all acknowledge that Netflix is way out ahead in every measure. We all know that Amazon has gotten a lot of a head start, too, and that Disney is working away. But I think there’s still gonna be room for a couple more, and you’re only going to be as good as the service and the programming you can provide. The assets here, I think, are really extraordinary. We’ve got HBO, and when you add in Warner Bros. and Turner, all of that comes together, and we’ll also acquire other things, so I think there’s a high probability we can come up with a great service. I think we’re gonna do something that’s really compelling.